Exit Wounds
by Zoe-Eliza-Evans
Summary: She works at a florist, she lives in a studio apartment and she really needs something done to make her hair look better. What's so special about Ella? Perhaps her relationship with Viking God of Mischief, Loki? [Might not update as often as you'd like and I'm not sure where this is going but I have some ideas]
1. Preface

She lay in bed in the world of reality and physical existence but in her mind she were somewhere else; the world of dreams and fiction. A cruel

place, whether or not the dream is good. You may find yourself being chased by a great bear or you may find yourself famous and happy. But whichever you

dream of, they are both cruel in their own ways.

This particular dream had been squirming its way into the young woman's subconscious for months yet she knew nothing of its purpose. Was it meant to

teach? Was it meant to warn? Was is meant to confuse?

Still wearing her night clothes, she stood at the end of a path just outside a wicked and sharp forest, barefoot. There was not a single scratch or speck of

mud on her, despite her short cotton nightdress and the slimy mud ahead of her. She appeared calm and collected, as if she knew exactly where she was

going. Not even she knew what was going on inside her head.

She began to walk forward. Away from the forest and its spindly. trees but towards the prison ahead. It was not an ordinary prison; no security

surrounding the areas; nor were there any big doors with big locks. It was simply a stone hut with cages on either side and two open walls.

As she approached the prison, the moans and groans of the prisoners filled her ears but their cries for help did not affect her and so she continued

onwards. She reached the entrance. For anyone not under the trance she was in, the sounds of over a hundred people, crammed into a line of barred cells.

Some were sobbing, some were screaming like madmen. Anyone not under the woman's trance wouldn't be able to bear the heartbreaking sounds and the

mere volume of them.

She stepped forward into the prison and in that very second, everything went black.


	2. Chapter 1

**[A/N: Hello there! I would like to apologise for not updating my Supernatural Fan fiction. I was totally gonna go somewhere with that. But I got out of the swing of it. I am going to make some changes to that one anyway and re-upload it onto here. Anyway, in the meantime, here is a Loki fanfiction that I wrote. It'll take a while before Loki is actually in it but he will be there in the next chapter. I just write too much at a time. I really hope you enjoy this and I hope I don't lose the rhythm that I have now. Reviews a****nd tips are also very welcome so please leave them if you have time! - Zoe xo ]**

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Ella blinked herself awake, forcing the drowsiness out of her eyes. She had begun the night at the top of her bed but now she had woken up, still in darkness, at the bottom with her duvet on the floor in a pile. She sat up slowly, having learnt how to do so as she would make herself dizzy, and reached for her mobile. Its huge bright screen blinded her temporarily. She scrunched her eyes shut and blinked as her eyes adjusted.

_ 3:43am_ it read. Ella sighed. Once again she had woken up at silly-oh-clock in the morning. It was one of the many thing in which she loathed about herself. She placed her phone back on the bedside table and swung her feet over the edge of her bed. Ella had recently moved into the apartment so there were boxes piled in the corners of her bedroom.

Had she not received a large sum of money from her grandmother's will, she would still be living with her parents, not so bad for a twenty-two year old. Of course, Ella was grateful for the money. It's just that she was surprised as she had never been allowed to see her grandmother. "A madwoman," her father often muttered when Ella would ask about her. To this day, she had no idea what made her parents refuse to let Ella see her.

She stood up, the warm, worn carpet on her toes. The headed for the door but as she reached for its handle, a massive surge of pain hit her brain. she fell to her knees, clutching her head. She could hear thousand of people cheering. She couldn't breathe, she couldn't see. Images appeared. A man in an emerald-green... cape? Cloak? It was something green. He wore a helmet with huge curved horns. She could only see the back of him. His arms were held high, as if he had won something.

Too quickly, the pain eased. The sounds of crowds and the image of the man were gone and poor Ella was left on the floor, panting. She moved her hands from her head to her face, which was wet from the tears. "Bloody... hell." she muttered through gasps. She placed a shaking hand on the floor and then the other and heaved herself up. She walked slowly to the bathroom, feeling slightly dizzy. She pulled the cord and the dull light came on. She went to the sink and turned the cold tap on. She splashed her face with the water. She twisted the tap back and looked at herself in the mirror. There were dark lavender circles under her gray-blue eyes which made her look paler than usual. Her full pink lips were lightly chapped. "You're not going mad. You're not going mad." She said to herself. She grabbed a towel from one of the open boxes labeled with 'BATHROOM' and dried her face.

Despite it being so early in the morning, Ella made herself a cup of coffee, with no milk as her friends often criticized. She leaned against the kitchen counter, staring at nothing when something caught her eye. One of the boxes. It was labelled with 'ARTY STUFF'. Since she was a child she was brilliant at drawing. She smiled as she remembered the drawing of her dad she did when she was three. He looked like Humpty Dumpty but for a three year-old it was amazing; the eyes, nose and mouth were in the right places as were the arms, five fingers-one shorter on each hand for thumbs-and legs with feet. She softly placed the mug on the counter and picked up the heavy box. She went back into the kitchen and placed it on the counter. She dug through it, in search for her sketchbook and charcoal pencils. It took her a few minutes to find the items but once she did she sat on her indigo velvet couch- another thing she had inherited from her grandmother- and crossed her legs. She turned to a fresh page, flicking through some of her previous artworks as she went, and pulled one of pencils from the pack. As soon as the charcoal touched the paper, she was lost in the wonderful feel of creativity.

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She slid the pencil back into the tin. The tips of her fingers were black from the charcoal once she had finished the sketch but, a true artist, she didn't care about mess. It was only then she realized what she had drawn. On what level of madness must she have been on to not realize what she was drawing? It was the man from the... oh what should we call it? A vision? A seizure? Whatever it was, she had drawn him. She had drawn his long arms up high but this time, unlike the vision (let's just call it a vision), he was holding some sort of spear. She had no idea what put that in her mind. She thought that he suited the spear quite well. Instead of there being thousands of people in some sort of arena, he was stood alone. The darkness was the only thing ahead of him. Not even the peculiar light from the spear lit a path for him.

Sketching is something that Ella often used to clear her head but this time, her sketch seemed to confuse and muddle her even further. 'What the hell _was_ that?' She thought to herself. She placed her sketchbook down beside her and stood up. She went back into her bedroom, flicking the light-switch as she entered, and checked her phone. This time the brightness of the screen didn't daze her. _5:02am_ it read. She pulled the charging cable out and took her phone into the bathroom with her. She placed it by the sink before she turned the shower on. She set the temperature in the shower and as she waited for it to change, she grabbed a large towel from the open box, pulled the toilet lid down and sat on it, placing the towel on top of the toilet. She played some music on her phone and once happy with her song choice, she stripped off and stepped into the shower.

Ella stayed in there for about half an hour-seemingly long, one knows, but the hot steam and the rhythm of the water provided a sort of peaceful state of mind for Ella. Something that was much-needed. She reluctantly stepped out and quickly wrapped the towel around herself. She grabbed her phone, music still playing and went to her bedroom to get ready for work.

She worked as a florist alongside one of her close friends, Gemma. Two years ago, Ella and her other five friends were having their weekly catch-up at a local café. Gemma was the last to get there, which was unusual for Gemma, but the group young women thought nothing of it. After all, not everyone is spot-on all the time. But after about half an hour, they each began to wonder where Gemma was. It was approximately a further ten minutes before she finally turned up, a huge smile on her face. She slid her jacket off, hanging it on the back of the chair before sitting down, excitement clear in her body language.

It was Farah who spoke first. "Gem... where the hell have you been?"

"You will not believe what I've done, guys."

"What?" They all said in unison.

"I've been given a shop, like, just now."

"But... how?" Asked Beth, Ella's best friend and the most sensible one of the group, "How on earth can you just get given a shop?"

"Well this old woman just came up to me and gave me this," she placed a ring of three keys and a piece of paper on the table. "She said that she was going somewhere and staying there for a long time and she needed someone to look after the place-that's the address there-for her."

"So you don't get to do anything with the place, then?" Ella asked.

"How do you know if this is actually a real place, Gem?" Bronte, the second most sensible, asked.

"That's the best thing! Before she walked off, she said I could sell anything as long as it was..." she tapped a finger on her chin for a second and looked up at the ceiling for a short moment, "Pure. I think she said."

The address was a legitimate one, to their surprise, and the place wasn't 'dodgy' at all. It turns out that the three keys were different. One for the gate which goes over the front door, another for the real front door and back door, and the last one for the vintage-looking cash register. It even had the cards that popped up with the price on it. Sadly, no money was left behind. After many suggestions, Gemma decided to turn this mysterious place into a florists, which she named 'Gemma's Geraniums (and other assortments)'. It literally says that in front of the shop.

Months later, Gemma's business was, please excuse the pun, blossoming. Thanks to an effort of all of her supporting friends, she was doing very well. Ella on the other hand had lost her job at Costa. She already had a limited amount of money and was still living with her parents so matters weren't made much worse. It wasn't as if her mother was charging her rent. Luckily, Gemma was in search for an assistant and so, welcomed Ella into her business with open arms.

She checked the time on her phone again. _5:59am_. Ella was one of those people who would get ready too early. If she were running late, even by about five minutes, she would get worked up. And people would actually notice her quickly growing more and more inpatient until they got back on her schedule. Not that she actually kept one.

Her apartment was only a twenty-minute walk away from Gemma's florists but she often stopped for breakfast at Deano's, a local, breakfast bar, which she and her dad would stop in when he drove her to work. Now, having moved away from home, she just walked there alone.

Being a regular customer, Ella had formed a strong friendship with the owner's young son, Sam, over the past few years. Sam was about nine-teen or twenty. Something around that age. Ella and him got on well, despite their opposite traits such as Sam's lack of artistic skills or Ella's lack of enthusiasm for sports. Sam was a very well-built man, being over six-foot tall and being very muscular. He had long brown surfer hair with a fringe that came past his eyebrows and he had olive-green eyes which sparkled with interest whenever Ella and him chatted.

Her friends often asked why she didn't ask him out for a drink or anything like that-they all had a slight crush on him-Ella just told them that didn't want to do anything like that at the moment. And also the fact that Sam was just a friend. She didn't want to complicate their current relationship.

Ella did one last check over herself in the mirror, blending a bit of smudged eyeliner and setting her forever challenging fringe back into place. She grabbed her navy pea coat and her cream scarf from the coat-stand, slid the two on, grabbed her keys, made sure that her phone and earphones were in her pocket and left her apartment. She straightened the collar on her coat outside her door before heading down the flight of stairs.

As she stepped outside, the spring chill caught her breath. She rubbed her hands together before pulling her earphones and mobile out from her pocket. She put each ear-bud into her ears, chose a song and off she set for Deano's Breakfast Bar.

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**[A/N: Wow I write such good cliffhangers, right? Haha no. Sorry about that... Anyway, if you've made it this far then well done. I forgot to mention at the top that if you see a typo or just want to correct my grammar, please either PM me or leave it in a review, along with a nice comment or one with constructive criticism. Thank you! - Zoe xo]**


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